MVP - The most commonly used word in the startup world. This is the MOST IMPORTANT too!
Pre-reading
The Artist and the Innovator by LeanStack
Dont start with an MVP
Let's now jump into MVP!
- A minimum viable product (MVP) is the smallest, cheapest and most feasible solution you / your team creates to deliver a solution for a specific challenge
- Starting directly with a solution and figuring a challenge to fit in is like building a tower without a foundation
- Problem + Solution Fit: Understand the problem inside out, define the most viable solution and craft an order then you build a solution
- When interviewing potential customers to validate your identified problem, try to get strong metrics so you as a founder can gain a deep understanding of the problem and solution landscape
Few things to remember!
- Your customers love value (any form) but investors love the traction you gained
- The business model is not the solution, it is the product and how you plan to make money delivering value
- Customers don't care about "how" and "what" about your solution. They only care how well your solution is solving their problems
In the early stages of building your start-up, it is super important to understand your customers above all else. Then comes the solution.
Goal: Build a "Minimum Lovable Product". Not just a "Minimum viable product" Typical ideology: Build Lean. Ship quick. Learn fast. Build better.
Why do we build products?
- Solve Problems, challenges and jobs-to-be-done
- Make customers happy and feel values
- Get lots of customers/users
- Make money (of course)
- Change the world / create a category
In the process of building great products, it is important to know;
- The strategy of "build and they (customers) will come" will almost never happen. You need to work to maximise your chances of success
- Provide a public roadmap or build in public. This will increase your chance of getting the most initial traction and also educate your customer and create awareness about your product
- Sometimes you don’t get as much feedback as expected until you launch it, however, this means it might not be easy to make changes to features
- If there is no clear direction, you will be constantly chasing what customers think they want rather than what they want.
Build on what is the core value of your product and how can you effectively provide that to your customer. Always be working towards building that MVP. It is important to trade off low priority features and don’t spend time on screens, pages and features that people will not use at the start.
The Lean Startup
// Simply the most validated approach to building useful products and reducing risk.
Lean Startup Methodology
Product Prioritisation Framework
RICE Score
What is the RICE score?
The RICE scoring model is a prioritization framework designed to help product managers determine which products, features, and other initiatives to put on their roadmaps by scoring these items according to four factors. These factors, which form the acronym RICE, are reach, impact, confidence, and effort.
Reach: How many people will this impact within a defined time period.
Impact: how much will this impact each person that is reached?
Confidence: how confident are you in your estimates?
Effort: how many “person-months” will this take?
More on RICE Scoring Model for Prioritization and how to calculate?
The lean MVP Building process
Recommended read
User Acquisition framework
The bullseye framework is a simple method that enables you to prioritize over the marketing channels that will make your company gain traction.
Tools to Build an MVP
Google Drive
Airtable
Pory.io
Notion
Zapier
Squarespace
Typedream
Unicorn
Canva
Fiverr
Invision
MarvelApp
Miro
Allo
Glide Apps
Shopify
Viral Loops
MemberSpace
